**2. Evolution of the mechanized harvesting of sugarcane**

There are reports on the use of mechanization in sugarcane harvesting since the 1940s; however, due to the great loss of raw material caused by the first harvester machines, mechanization did not gain importance in this period, predominating manual harvesting until the 1950s [10–12].

From the 1960s to the 1980s, there was a great increase in the use of mechanization in the sugarcane harvesting. In the 1960s, some countries, such as Australia, used the mechanized system in about 80% of the sugarcane harvesting [10, 11]. At the end of the 1970s, the sugarcane harvesting in Australia reached 100% of mechanization [13]. In some other countries, the mechanized system was introduced only in the late 1980s, due to labor shortages, economic and environmental problems [14]. Mechanization requires large initial capital investments, however, increases production and significantly diminishes labor requirements and costs.

The fuel crisis (the search for alternative fuel sources, for example, ethanol) and environmental (reduction of burning in sugarcane plantations), social (labor issues) and economic issues led other countries to join the mechanized harvesting system from the 1990s. In this way, the mechanized harvesting was introduced in the scenario of the sugarcane industry. After that, many and great improvements have been observed, such as the increasing volume of the sugarcane harvested, the industry became able to meet the demands, studies have been made aiming the performance improvement of the machinery and equipment, and the pollution generated by the pre-harvest burning of sugarcane has been reduced. Therefore, the mechanized harvesting grew in synchrony with the technological evolution, forced by the demand of the consumer market and the environmental impositions [15–17].
